


Doomsday

by QueenPotatos



Category: Free!
Genre: For the Future Festival, M/M, This one shot is kind of very visual, day 2 : reincarnation, dystopia au, kind of soul mates au as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:20:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4528773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenPotatos/pseuds/QueenPotatos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of his nights were spent here, at the nightclub. Haruka's life was aimless and insipid, until eventually, a simple glance at a stranger made him remember what he had forgotten for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomsday

**Author's Note:**

> This story was only writen because of this song: Doomsday (Doctor Who OST). Since the song gave me the inspiration to write I highly suggest that you listen to the music while reading.

 

 

[Song: Doomsday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am7eHyJ8_1Y)

 

 

 

_Boom boom boom._

 

The pounding of the bass, coming from the hi-fi just next to his ear, made the liquid in his drink vibrate. Haruka had chosen one of the best seats in the nightclub, the one closest to one of the speakers; he was almost able to feel the same vibration, the one working on his drink, in his chest. Almost. Humanity lived in a sick world where everything had become dull. Pain, love, hate, joy; even the five senses had been shut down. Only a few colors could be seen, only a few textures could be felt, only a few meals could be tasted. Water or alcohol, it didn’t make any difference; and since vodka was cheaper than the most precious resource in the universe, the youth only swore by the strong, transparent liquid.

Tonight, the music resonated and desperate young adults were dancing haphazardly, their movements in utter incoordination, reflecting the chaos they lived in. The Music was affected by this unknown evil as well; it had no color, no rhythm, no rhyme, it was merely a repetitive pattern of random notes thrown together. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had left to feel.

The music, sometimes, some nights, made random colors appeared in the ceiling, on the walls, the floor; just like at this very moment. The young clubbers were dancing with pink neon lights enveloping them on the dancefloor without remembering the name of the color they saw, or what else in their world used to be pink. But none were to blame; Haruka couldn’t remember either, no matter how hard he tried.

He took a slip of his drink. Tasteless. Just like any other nights.

There was one thing that pushed Haruka to come back here every night. Of all the people here, only a few wore one and unique color that could be seen by others. Women put it on their lips, boys in their hairs, most of the time, or sometimes on their clothes. Haruka hadn’t chosen anything. His eyes were blue, clear and pure like the Oceans his grandmother had told him when he was very little; but no-one knew what the Ocean really looked like nowadays. At night, in his dreams, he tried to remember. Since the day his grandmother had told him about the Ocean, Haruka had lived with the ill feeling that he had forgotten something, something so very important it would change his life forever, if he was only able to remember, one bit, one glimpse of this fundamental thing. The thought gave him the plainest thrill, but it was still better than nothing. Soon he became addicted to that thrill, just like everyone else of his times. In his journey to seek the thrill, he had ended up in places like these, where you could get all the stimulation a body could stand, just to be able to feel something.  

Haruka had bright blue eyes, a thing no one had ever witnessed before; the other they couldn’t help but stare. He hated when people did that. Staring was rude, and it annoyed him; yet the irritation he felt was better than nothing. It helped him, in a way, to remember that he was, that he lived, that he was made of flesh and bones and had a mind, a soul, which could still be affected.

Someone was looking at him from the corner of the club. Haruka locked eyes with the stranger for a moment, and felt more annoyed than usual. It made him blink, and take a harder grip on his drink.

The second later the stranger was looking elsewhere, and Haruka became even more irritated.

Then, he moved toward the exit.

A flash of pink light illuminated his face, and the thrill was back, but this time it wasn’t dull, it wasn’t plain. it was something real, it was nervous and urging and – what was it Haruka had forgotten, already? It was something old, very, very old, older than his body, older than this dystopia they lived in. It had something to do with the Ocean, and about something pink, but what about the stranger?

Haruka hadn’t taken his eyes off of him. He moved hastily into the crowd, ignored a couple of wandering hands on his body, his eyes focused on the exit. One last time, before he disappeared with another person, the stranger glanced back inside the club, and his eyes fell on Haruka’s.

After that, nothing.

The music continued to pump, Haruka’s vodka vibrated in its glass. He couldn’t stay here. The stranger was his new thrill, and he needed to know why.

He finished his drink in one gulp, and immediately spat it out on the floor. A couple of clubbers had stopped dancing to look at him with a stunned expression on their faces. Why would someone spit something tasteless, after all?

Except it wasn’t, not anymore; and Haruka had just discovered he hated Vodka.

He left the club without paying; he couldn’t risk it, if lost the stranger, he’d never know, and never forgive himself for it.

 

The streets were full of drunks lying on the ground, some were dressed, some weren’t; there was rubbish everywhere on the sidewalk, where there was one, and the shattered glass of broken bottles. The only light was that of the full moon and, when they were lucky, the malfunctioning street lamps dating from the Second World War, which flickered weakly, more than anything. Everything was grey. Even the light.

Haruka saw the stranger walking just ahead of him in a narrow street, where the ground was made of cracked concrete tiles and the walls of gross, rectangular bricks. The stranger had pulled a leather jacket on; his hood swung behind him as he walke, and his hips rolled with each step. Haruka followed him by instinct, and never let his eyes leave the stranger’s silhouette.

The further they walked, the more Haruka noticed small details that weren’t unknown to him, as if they were part of a larger puzzle hidden inside his mind. The stranger had a chain attached to his trousers, and a shark embroidered on his back. But most of all, it was the way he moved which troubled Haruka the most. He had seen this allure before. Flashes of memories passed through his mind, as his skin felt the air growing colder, as his steps and the stranger’s echoed louder in the deserted alley. It was definitely not the first time he’d seen that back walking ahead of him, and not the first time he’d been desperately trying to reach him.

The man was just walking, but the sight fascinated him. And from that point, from Haruka’s perspective, everything happened extremely slowly – especially the way his hips and shoulders moved, and the way his bangs and hood seemed to be floating behind him.

There was a moment when Haruka couldn’t even remember where they were. He didn’t recognize the streets they took; they were similar to the ones he knew but not quite the same; something had changed. Something, or maybe everything.

It was the color. The grey was slowly fading, and being replaced by something new, something tern drab, but something not totally grey.

He could feel pins and needles at the tips of his fingers. He could feel the small rock in the back of his shoe. He could feel the shit covering the streets. He could picture the stranger in his memory now. He knew that back. He knew that presence, he knew that aura, he knew he was the key to the most important thing Haruka had forgotten.

Suddenly, the stranger stopped. Haruka did the same, leaving an acceptable distance separating them. The stranger turned around. His eyes were pink, as well as his hair.

They locked eyes again, for longer than Haruka would have expected;, and then Rin pulled his hood up and started to run.

Time flashed back to its normal speed and Haruka felt himself pinned to the ground.

 

_‘Come, I’ll show you a sight you’ve never seen before!’_

 

Cherry blossoms were pink, the Ocean was blue; Rin’s dream when he was a kid was to swim in a pool full of cherry blossom, something he did just before he left high-school. He went to Australia just after that, he left Haruka behind and Haruka had chased after him, had followed his back, as Rin showed him the way.

The memories stopped there. Haruka needed to see more. And so he ran, as fast as he could.

He could see the embroidered shark getting bigger and bigger as his steps got closer to him. Wasn’t Rin supposed to be the better runner of the two? This memory might be a bit distorted, but he knew the others weren’t.

 

_'Romantic, right?’_

 

_'I have always admired you.’_

 

_'You gave me the best sight I could have asked for.’_

 

“Rin!!!” Haruka yelled.  

All of their lives, the last one and all the ones before, came back to him in a rush of emotions. his body couldn’t handle any more. His heart was about to explode, hammering in his chest; but against the odds, Haruka had never felt this good before. He had been running after Rin for lifetimes, and he had found him at last, in the corner of a narrow street full of dirt and used heroin needles.

Rin has stopped at the sound of his name being called. There was someone next to him, someone who was built maybe three times bigger than Haruka. He had dulled eyes and his skin was grey; next to him, Rin shone like nothing else in the world. The colors were so bright it blinded Haruka for a while, but it was just Rin’s normal self, it was just that Haruka had forgotten, with the countless years spent without him, what he truly looked like.

Rin took his hood off. He was puzzled, perplexed; there was something bothering him more than intriguing him and Haruka didn’t like that look one bit. What if Rin hadn’t remembered him? What if he couldn’t?

Could he see the world the way Haruka saw it now?  Did he remember how the Sakura tree from their school had bloomed majestically? What if he couldn’t?

Haruka wanted him to see the world as wonderfully as it truly was. He wanted to show the sight to Rin;. he glared at him, substantially; maybe too much, because then, the world exploded. Everything brutally snapped back to its rightful place at the exact same moment. The temperature of the air, the humidity, the light, the gravity, the vivid colors, the pain, the lack of air, blood streaming in his veins, the fact that he was alive and that he had been looking for his other half for more than a lifetime and that, finally, his journey had found its end.

Haruka’s body crumbled; his legs couldn’t hold the weight of all these new things, not yet at least.

His head on the ground, he felt the earth vibrating. There were Rin’s and his friend’s footsteps. They were leaving.

 _'Rin.’_ He thought, _'No, don’t go…don’t go, now that I’ve finally found you.’_

He could felt that one of the pairs of steps was hesitant to move on, and that fact alone gave him hope, and the strength to stand up once more. Haruka had taken time to remember; he needed to give Rin some as well. but during that time he had to stay close, he couldn’t  bear to not be there when, eventually, Rin remembered.

Haruka leaned his weight on his elbows, and sought support from the walls next to him. He literally leaned his entire frame on the red bricks and used his hands to pull himself forwards. His legs were still so weak, but he didn’t care; even when the wall ended, Haruka stumbled but never fell. He walked, or tried to, looking more like a baby lamb than like the grown up man he was, and never let Rin’s silhouette move from his sight.

But Rin was moving too fast. His hips were rocking, hypnotizing Haruka, leaving him behind in the middle of the road, bare and defenseless. Rin…

Only a few minutes after his fingers had started to feel the cold after all these years, they were already becoming numb again.

The sound of the traffic died away with Rin.

Strength grew in his muscles as his human feelings shattered in the air like stardust.

And then, just as Haru was losing sight of all the colors;

“Haru!!”

A voice came from the depth of his heart, and taught him how to see the world again.

“Haru!!”

Steps echoed in the pavement; when Haruka looked up he no longer saw the embroidered shark; instead there was Rin’s face and his eyes full of tears, and Haruka then remembered how to cry.

For a moment, nothing else existed but him, and Rin, running to his arms; nothing but the two halves of a single piece that would be dismantled one reincarnation after the other, with only the hope that one day one would find the other, for them both to live together until death tore them apart once more. Nothing existed, not even the car lights coming all too quickly from Haru’s side.

Rin ran, Haruka closed his eyes, and relished the way Rin was screaming his name in the young night. He waited for what seemed to be an eternity until the impact, eventually, hit him hard.

 

The truck had stopped a few meters before the two lovers. Rin held him tight against his chest; Haruka let him cry on his cheek and shoulder as much as he needed to – after all, they had the rest of their lives ahead of them to be together.

Haruka lifted his eyes up to the sky. He hadn’t realized it was raining. He didn’t even know when it had started. He had never realized during this life, how good it felt to be alive. Rin dropped a kiss in the crook of his neck. It made him shiver and spread in him a new kind of sensation, one he recognized as pleasure. He didn’t need anything more than that. The sound of the rain falling on the tarmac and the warmth of Rin’s body finally fitting his own was something that could get him along till doomsday.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ...well, yeah, okay; I'm sorry for the truck.  
>  I'd like to thank Titty who did a great job at beta-ing me; you don't see it but she did an amazing job!


End file.
